Road to serenity: Individual variations in the efficacy of unobtrusive respiratory guidance for driving stress regulation.

Stress impacts driving-related cognitive functions like attention and decision-making, and may arise in automated vehicles due to non-driving tasks. Unobtrusive relaxation techniques are needed to regulate stress without distracting from driving. Tactile wearables have shown efficacy in stress regulation through respiratory guidance, but individual variations may affect their efficacy. This study assessed slow-breathing tactile guidance under different stress levels on 85 participants. Physiological, behavioral and subjective data were collected. The influence of individual variations (e.g., driving habits and behavior, personality) using logistic regression analysis was explored. Participants could follow the guidance and adjust breathing while driving, but subjective efficacy depended on individual variations linked to different efficiency in using the technique, in relation with its attentional cost. An influence of factors linked to the evaluation of context criticality was also found. The results suggest that considering individual and contextual variations is crucial in designing and using such techniques in demanding driving contexts. In this line some design recommendations and insights for further studies are provided.

Androgen deprivation-induced elevated nuclear SIRT1 promotes prostate tumor cell survival by reactivation of AR signaling.

The NAD+-dependent deacetylase, Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) is involved in prostate cancer pathogenesis. However, the actual contribution is unclear as some reports propose a protective role while others suggest it is harmful. We provide evidence for a contextual role for SIRT1 in prostate cancer. Our data show that (i) mice orthotopically implanted with SIRT1-silenced LNCaP cells produced smaller tumors; (ii) SIRT1 suppression mimicked AR inhibitory effects in hormone responsive LNCaP cells; and (iii) caused significant reduction in gene signatures associated with E2F and MYC targets in AR-null PC-3 and E2F and mTORC1 signaling in castrate-resistant ARv7 positive 22Rv1 cells. Our findings further show increased nuclear SIRT1 (nSIRT1) protein under androgen-depleted relative to androgen-replete conditions in prostate cancer cell lines. Silencing SIRT1 resulted in decreased recruitment of AR to PSA enhancer selectively under androgen-deprivation conditions. Prostate cancer outcome data show that patients with higher levels of nSIRT1 progress to advanced disease relative to patients with low nSIRT1 levels. Collectively, we demonstrate that lowering SIRT1 levels potentially provides new avenues to effectively prevent prostate cancer recurrence.

EEG study on affective valence elicited by novel and familiar pictures using ERD/ERS and SVM-RFE.

EEG signals have been widely explored in emotional processing analyses, both in time and frequency domains. However, in such studies, habituation phenomenon is barely considered in the discrimination of different emotional responses. In this work, spectral features of the event-related potentials (ERPs) are studied by means of event-related desynchronization/synchronization computation. In order to determine the most relevant ERP features for distinguishing how positive and negative affective valences are processed within the brain, support vector machine-recursive feature elimination is employed. The proposed approach was applied for investigating in which way the familiarity of stimuli affects the affective valence processing as well as which frequency bands and scalp regions are more involved in this process. In a group composed of young adult women, results prove that parietooccipital region and theta band are especially involved in the processing of novelty in emotional stimuli. Furthermore, the proposed method has shown to perform successfully using a moderated number of trials.

Individual EEG differences in affective valence processing in women with low and high neuroticism.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, individual differences in brain electrophysiology during positive and negative affective valence processing in women with different neuroticism scores are quantified. METHODS: Twenty-six women scoring high and low on neuroticism participated on this experiment. A support vector machine (SVM)-based classifier was applied on the EEG single trials elicited by high arousal pictures with negative and positive valence scores. Based on the accuracy values obtained from subject identification tasks, the most distinguishing EEG channels among participants were detected, pointing which scalp regions show more distinct patterns. RESULTS: Significant differences were obtained, in the EEG heterogeneity between positive and negative valence stimuli, yielding higher accuracy in subject identification using negative pictures. Regarding the topographical analysis, significantly higher accuracy values were reached in occipital areas and in the right hemisphere (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Mainly, individual differences in EEG can be located in parietooccipital regions. These differences are likely to be due to the different reactivity and coping strategies to unpleasant stimuli in individuals with high neuroticism. In addition, the right hemisphere shows a greater individual specificity. SIGNIFICANCE: An SVM-based classifier asserts the individual specificity and its topographical differences in electrophysiological activity for women with high neuroticism compared to low neuroticism.

Fístula apendicocutánea: complicación tardía de la apendicitis aguda / Appendical-cutaneous fistula: a late complication of acute appendicitis

Los cuadros de dolor abdominal en la población infectada por el virus de la inmunodeficiencia humana (VIH) son frecuentes, debido a las enfermedades asociadas a este virus, por lo que a menudo se producen errores y retrasos en el diagnóstico y tratamiento de la apendicitis aguda, incrementándose la tasa de complicaciones. En este trabajo se describe un caso de fístula apendicocutánea en un paciente infectado por el VIH al que no se le diagnosticó una apendicitis aguda (AU)

Estudio de la eritropoyetina sérica en pacientes con cáncer colorrectal / Serum erythropoietin response in patients with colorectal cancer

Introducción. Los pacientes con tumores sólidos avanzados desarrollan frecuentemente anemia. El mecanismo más importante en la patogenia de la anemia es el descenso de la eritropoyesis. Ésta puede ser debida a un descenso de la síntesis de eritropoyetina, una menor actividad de ésta sobre la médula ósea o una respuesta disminuida de la médula ósea a la eritropoyetina. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar la tasa de eritropoyetina en pacientes con cáncer colorrectal poco avanzado, comparándola con un grupo control. Pacientes y métodos. Hemos estudiado a 20 pacientes con cáncer colorrectal, que fueron diagnosticados por estudio radiológico y/o endoscópico con biopsia, y a un grupo control de 20 sujetos sanos. Tras el diagnóstico se determinaron los siguientes parámetros séricos: hemoglobina, hematócrito, hematíes y eritropoyetina. El análisis estadístico se realizó con el test de la t de Student y las correlaciones entre las variables con el test de Pearson (r). Resultados. Los parámetros hematológicos fueron inferiores en el grupo del cáncer colorrectal, aunque se hallaban dentro de la normalidad. La tasa de eritropoyetina en este grupo se encontraba significativamente aumentada (p < 0,01), existiendo una correlación entre la eritropoyetina y la hemoglobina (r = 0,59; p < 0,01), y entre la eritropoyetina y el hematócri-to (r = 0,61; p < 0,01).Conclusiones. Las concentraciones de eritropoyetina están muy elevadas en los pacientes con cáncer colorrectal, a pesar de no presentar una anemia evidente, pudiendo deberse este incremento a otras causas (factores tumorales, citocinas, etc.) (AU)